Transformative justice – The "True" North

Finding transformative justice safety solutions presents some of the same challenges as finding any solution: finding things that might work where you are and evaluating if what you tried works. Evaluating what works also presents one basic challenge if your initiative is one of many things being tried. If nothing changes, you know everything failed, including your initiative. However, if things get better it’s sometimes hard to know how much of the improvement, if any, is due to your thing. Another challenge is that knowing if “things got better” regarding safety requires measuring changes in peoples’ actual, and perceived, safety.

My next few blog posts will explore these challenges regarding safety issues in Ottawa, starting with public transit safety.

Since August 2024, there have been several incidents on Ottawa’s O-Train commuter system that have raised safety concerns:

August 2024 – Ottawa Police sought a suspect for an assault that occurred on August 27, 2024, on a train. At approximately 3:00 pm, the victim was walking toward a seat on the train, when the suspect pushed past and struck them. An altercation ensued and the suspect exited the train and fled the area on foot. The victim sustained minor injuries.

September 2024 – A 26-year-old man was charged by the Ottawa police hate and bias crime unit for allegedly assaulting four people in separate incidents on OC Transpo buses and trains, while uttering “hate-filled” comments, leaving all four victims seriously injured.

November 2024 – Two men were sentenced to prison in December 2025 for a “venomous” and “hate-filled” attack on a 28-year-old Black man at Ottawa’s Hurdman Station on November 16, 2024. The attackers used racial slurs, a knife, and a dog during the attack, which was found to be motivated by anti-Black hate.

April 2025 – Ottawa police charged five youths following an alleged swarming of a lone woman at the Rideau O-Train station platform on April 25, 2025.

These attacks happened despite Ottawa’s transit service, OC Transpo, having several safety measures in place, including:

Special Constables, who are sworn peace officers with powers similar to police;
System-wide monitoring and dispatch including security camera operators monitoring vehicles and stations and call-takers and dispatchers coordinating responses;
The Transecure program which aims to make all transit staff part of the safety network with bus operators and other employees trained to handle medical emergencies, suspicious activity, fires, accidents, and threats; and
Environmental and operational measures, including well-lit “Night Stop” areas at stations after 9 p.m., the “Safe Stop” program allowing riders to request to get off closer to home at night, emergency phones placed throughout stations and visible patrols to increase perceived safety.

So what could Ottawa do to make public transit safer? Several Canadian cities have taken non-police measures that could provide guidance.

1. Toronto Transit Commission – Community safety ambassadors, outreach workers, crisis teams, and station staff

Toronto adopted a “community safety and well-being” model that integrates social services and non-enforcement staff into the transit system.

Key non-police components:

Community safety ambassadors and additional TTC staff in stations
Mental-health crisis teams (Toronto Community Crisis Service)
Streets to Homes outreach workers for people experiencing homelessness
Multi-disciplinary outreach teams (LOFT)
De-escalation training for frontline transit staff
Public awareness campaigns and safety communication

Reported impact:

Offences against customers down 28% since Dec. 2022
Offences against employees down 38% since Jan. 2023
Safety complaints down 56%
Rider perception of safety increased from 57% to 64%

2. Saskatoon Transit – Public awareness campaign targeting assaults

Saskatoon implemented a public awareness campaign focused on respect for transit workers as part of a broader safety plan.

Key non-police elements:

Campaign featuring real transit operators sharing experiences
Ads and videos promoting respect for drivers and workers
Collaboration with the transit union to change rider behaviour

Results:

Operator assaults dropped from 9 in the first half of 2024 to 0 in the second half.
Rider confidence and employee perceptions of safety increased.

3. Calgary Transit – Ambassadors, lighting, and social-service partnerships

Calgary has implemented a transit ambassador program and environmental design improvements.

Key non-police elements:

Transit ambassadors who help riders and report issues
Improved lighting and station visibility
Expanded cleaning and maintenance
Partnerships with community outreach teams and shelters
Support for people sheltering in stations during extreme weather

City of Calgary surveys showed improved rider perceptions of safety, May-November 2023, with:

Daytime CTrain safety perception rising from 67% to 72%;
Feeling safe waiting at stations (day) rising from 64% to 70%; and
Night-time safety perception also improving (riding: 33% to 39%; waiting: 27% to 34%)

Calgary also reported that social disorder incidents on the city’s CTrains like fights, insults, open drug use and overdoses were down between Oct. 1, 2023 and Dec. 15, 2023, numbering 3,450 incidents, compared with 4,146 in the same period in 2022.

4. Edmonton Transit Service – Bystander intervention and anti-harassment campaigns

Edmonton implemented a Safe City campaign focused on reducing harassment and gender-based violence.

Key non-police elements:

Gender-based safety planning (GBA+) including gender-based violence bystander-awareness education campaigns
Collaboration with community groups and Indigenous organizations

Ottawa doesn’t currently use transit ambassadors or have a 24/7 mental health crisis response system that covers the entire city (like Toronto’s Community Crisis Service).

Toronto’s Streets to Homes program is a single, city-operated 24/7 street outreach program that directly connects people to housing and follow-up supports and is highly centralized and integrated. Ottawa has outreach teams doing very similar work but the system is decentralized, delivered by multiple agencies funded by the city.

Toronto has Multidisciplinary Outreach Teams (M-DOTs), focused on health, housing and outreach providing a continuous street presence and long-term engagement with highly vulnerable people, operated by LOFT Community Services. Ottawa provides similar services to the M-DOT teams but lacks a single, unified, multidisciplinary street outreach team operating at scale. Instead, Ottawa services are spread across various services including crisis teams (Ottawa Hospital Mobile Crisis Team (MCT), Alternate Neighbourhood Crisis Response (ANCHOR), clinical outreach (Royal Ottawa Hospital) and housing/case management (Canadian Mental Health Association).

Saskatoon and Ottawa have done public awareness campaigns targeting staff safety. In 2023, Edmonton Transit Service launched its One Strong Voice Bystander Awareness Campaign aimed at reducing gender-based violence and harassment in transit and other public spaces. OC Transpo doesn’t currently have an awareness campaign specifically targeting violence against riders.

Given all this, could Ottawa’s transit system be made safer by implementing some, or all, of the following:

Community safety ambassadors;
A public awareness campaign targeting violence against riders;
A city-wide, 24/7 mental health crisis response system; and/or
A single, unified, multidisciplinary street outreach team operating at scale

What resources would be needed for the City to implement these and how would the City evaluate their effectiveness – and sustainability?

Community safety ambassadors

ChatGPT says it would cost Ottawa $3-5 million a year to implement a community safety ambassador program like Toronto’s with 40-60 ambassadors, covering the LRT + major bus hubs. That doesn’t sound like much and that’s partly because Toronto ambassadors are employed by West Egg Security that pays them $18/hr, barely above Ontario’s $17.60/hr minimum wage. That’s not transformative justice. That’s exploitation. Someone whose job duties include engaging with unhoused individuals and connect them with support resources, offering trauma-informed de-escalation support when clients are in distress, collecting and disposing of harm-reduction supplies and reporting suspicious observations and activities to security and the proper authorities, shouldn’t paid the same as someone working at Tim Horton’s. Properly compensated ambassadors could be part of the solution.

City-wide, 24/7 mental health crisis response system

ChatGTP said it would cost Ottawa $9-15 million dollars a year to expand its current mental health crisis response program, ANCHOR, to make it 24/7 city-wide. The Ottawa police are currently asking the Ottawa Police Service Board to approve the police spending $30 million dollars to equip all OPS officers with body-worn cameras (BWCs). And the Board will no doubt approve the purchase despite the OPS providing no valid evidence that BWCs will improve police accountability as the OPS claims. Given there’s ample evidence that a 24/7, city-wide mental health crisis response system improves safety for all, Ottawa city council could use the $30 million to expand ANCHOR to a 24/7, city-wide program for two years instead of on body cameras.

A public awareness campaign targeting violence against riders

This would be the easiest to implement by simply adding a focus on riders to OC Transpo’s existing campaign targeting violence against employees.

A single, unified, multidisciplinary street outreach team operating at scale

As Ottawa’s street outreach services are spread across various services, the City could convene members of those services to explore modeling Toronto’s single, unified, multidisciplinary street outreach team operating at scale and run by a single agency (LOFT Community Services in Toronto).

Evaluation

The City will have to evaluate the impact of any initiatives on actual and perceived safety. Actual safety can be measured by reductions in offences against riders and employees and reductions in safety complaints. Changes in rider perception of safety can be measured via surveys. The results must be disaggregated (i.e. women, racialized people, 2SLGBTQ+, people with disabilities, etc.)

To address the evaluation challenges outlined at the beginning on this post, Ottawa can consider:

Randomized controlled trials – For example, implementing an initiative in some transit stations but not others (yet) then comparing outcomes between “treated” and “control” groups;
Staggered rollout (phased implementation) – Instead of launching everything everywhere at once, the city would introduce initiatives at different times or places; and/or
Factorial design (when testing multiple initiatives) – If the city is launching several initiatives, they can combine them systematically: Group 1: A only; Group 2: B only; Group 3: A + B; Group 4: neither (control). This helps estimate individual effects (of A or B separately), and interaction effects (of A+B together).

If City’s are designing a bundle of initiatives (like transit safety measures), the biggest mistake is launching everything at once citywide. Instead, they should phase where and when they rollout, keep some areas unchanged to use as comparative baselines (even if temporary), track granular data (location, time, intensity) and predefine what success looks like for each initiative.

Even modest design choices here can make a huge difference in what cities can prove later.

One thing I hope this post demonstrates is that transformative justice community safety initiatives are harder to implement than carceral ones because, unlike the carceral ones, TJ solutions must be evidence-based and rigorously evaluated.

Regarding safety in Ottawa where I live, whether it’s speeding on neighbourhood streets, violent incidents on the O-Train, Ottawa’s light rail system, or crises connected to addiction and homelessness, the response from political and police leadership is strikingly predictable. They say we need more police: more patrols, more enforcement, more uniforms in public spaces. Implicit in this argument is a troubling idea, that residents will not be safe until there is effectively a cop on every corner.

But the evidence tells a very different story. More police doesn’t equal safety. In fact, it often produces the opposite result: more harm, more fear, and deeper inequities, especially for Black and Middle Eastern communities who already experience disproportionate police use of force. If Ottawa is serious about public safety, it must move beyond reactive, police-first thinking and invest in transformative justice and non-police community safety solutions.

The Ottawa Police Service (OPS), like police services across North America, frequently frames safety as a question of capacity: if only there were more officers, more tools, and more authority, then harm could be prevented. This logic suggests that danger is best addressed through enforcement and punishment.

Yet decades of research and lived experience show that increased police presence leads to increased police contact, and that contact is not evenly distributed. More officers on the streets inevitably means more stops, more searches, more arrests, and more uses of force. In Ottawa, Black and Middle Eastern residents bear the brunt of this expansion.

Instead of asking “How do we respond to harm?”, transformative justice asks, “How do we prevent harm by addressing its root causes?” And instead of relying on institutions that often reproduce violence, like the police, it centers community-based solutions that build collective care, accountability, and resilience.

Speeding

Take the issue of speeding. Speeding is a real safety issue in Ottawa. It endangers pedestrians, cyclists, and other drivers, and it disproportionately affects seniors, children, and people with disabilities. The default response, however, is enforcement, ticketing drivers through police patrols or automated speed cameras.

Even Ottawa Police Chief Eric Stubbs has acknowledged the limits of the police approach. Following the province of Ontario’s decision to eliminate speed cameras in November 2025, Stubbs admitted that OPS will not be able to deploy officers to every location where cameras once existed. This admission unintentionally reveals a deeper truth: policing has never been a scalable or sustainable solution to traffic safety.

Communities must look beyond police enforcement to design streets that are safe by default. Non-police solutions to speeding include:

Traffic calming infrastructure, such as speed humps, raised crosswalks, curb extensions, and narrowed lanes, which physically slow vehicles without relying on punishment.
Street redesigns that prioritize people over cars, including protected bike lanes, pedestrian-first intersections, and reduced speed limits paired with road designs that make speeding difficult.
Community-led safety programs, where residents work with city planners—not police—to identify dangerous areas and co-design solutions.
Public education campaigns rooted in harm prevention rather than fear or fines, emphasizing shared responsibility and community well-being.

These approaches are proven to reduce speeds and collisions while avoiding the racialized impacts of traffic enforcement.

Violent attacks on the O-Train: policing the symptom, not the cause

Violent incidents on Ottawa’s O-Train over the last year understandably generate fear and anger. Calls quickly follow for more police officers on platforms, in stations, or even in every train car. But saturating the transit system with police does not address why people are vulnerable to attack in the first place, nor does it reliably deter harm.

Putting cops on every O-Train car would be enormously expensive, logistically unrealistic, and likely to increase negative interactions with racialized riders, youth, and people in crisis. It risks turning public transit into another heavily policed space rather than a shared public good.

Non-police safety solutions for transit must focus on prevention, deterrence, and care, including:

Improved station and vehicle design, such as better lighting, clear sightlines, emergency call buttons, and staffed help points.
Transit ambassadors or safety workers—trained, unarmed staff whose role is de-escalation, assistance, and presence, not enforcement.
Increased service frequency, reducing overcrowding and long waits that can heighten stress and conflict.
Community-based crisis response teams that can be dispatched quickly to support someone in distress without resorting to police intervention.
Supportive services near transit hubs, ensuring people who are unhoused or in crisis are connected to help rather than pushed from one space to another.

Safety on the O-Train is not just about stopping attackers; it is about making people less isolated, less desperate, and more supported.

Addiction and homelessness: policing is not care

Perhaps nowhere is the failure of police-led safety more apparent than in responses to addiction and homelessness. Police are routinely called to handle overdoses, mental health crises, encampments, and public disorder, tasks they are neither trained nor equipped to address effectively.

In the short term, non-police solutions are urgently needed, including:

Mobile crisis response teams made up of health workers, peer support workers, and social workers who can respond without criminalization.
24/7 safe consumption and overdose prevention services, reducing deaths and connecting people to care.
Low-barrier shelters and warming spaces, so people are not forced to choose between safety and dignity.
Peer-led outreach, which builds trust far more effectively than uniformed enforcement.

Long-term solutions require structural change:

Permanent supportive housing with on-site services.
Accessible, publicly funded addiction treatment and mental health care, without long waitlists.
Income supports and living wages, addressing the economic roots of homelessness.
Community accountability models, where harm is addressed through support, restitution, and healing rather than punishment.

Police involvement in these issues often escalates situations, increases trauma, and cycles people through the criminal justice system, at enormous human and financial cost.

Choosing transformation over fear

Ottawa stands at a crossroads. One path leads to more police, larger budgets, and deeper inequities, while leaving the root causes of harm untouched. The other path embraces transformative justice: investing in housing, health care, safe infrastructure, and community-led safety.

True safety is not the absence of visible disorder enforced by police. It is the presence of care, stability, and connection. It is streets designed so people are not killed by speeding cars. It is transit systems where all riders feel safe. It is a city where addiction and homelessness are met with compassion and resources, not handcuffs.

We do not need a cop on every corner. We need communities empowered to keep one another safe, without fear, without violence, and without leaving anyone behind.